


What They Bring Back

by tanukiham



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Amnesia, Canon Divergence, M/M, Snowed In
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-30 04:05:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12100350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanukiham/pseuds/tanukiham
Summary: What they bring back from the mountain is not Carver Hawke.





	What They Bring Back

**Author's Note:**

> Originally, I was just trying out story openings. I wrote three. One of them stuck.
> 
> 1\. What they bring back from the mountain is not Carver Hawke. It looks like him, talks like him, walks with his strong swinging stride. Its laugh, though, has a wicked burr to it that portends a more wicked sting, and Cullen knows; this is not his Hawke, and it must be destroyed.
> 
> 2\. What they bring back from the mountain is not Carver Hawke. It has his shape, his broad hands, his shoulders, his mouth that Cullen has kissed and kissed and now is still. But Carver is gone, and Cullen has all that is left of him wrapped up in a heart growing now cold as Carver’s flesh from the knowledge that he will never have anything more than this again.

What they bring back from the mountain is not Carver Hawke. He walks into the fort under his own power, but his walk is loose, his buckles loose, and when Cullen calls his name he does not look up.

“Hawke,” Cullen says again. “Knight-Lieutenant. Ser Carver.”

Then he looks, but his expression is scattered like his attention, partway between polite interest and confusion. “Are you the Commander here?”

Cullen cannot think. “ _Carver_. Do you not know me?”

“Should I?” Carver blinks like a man in a daze. “Another Fereldan, yeah? Am I really a Templar now?” He says it as if it’s impossible, as if nothing could be _more_ impossible.

It seems too terrible to comprehend, and something in Cullen already does but the rest of him refuses to. He looks to the Knight-Corporal who accompanied Carver to the summit; she looks back at him, her expression grim, and shakes her head. Cullen feels it like a stone beneath his ribs.

“You are indeed a Templar,” Cullen tells Carver, with as much sincerity as he can muster, “and a fine one. Excuse me, I must speak with Ser Travers. Will you wait here?”

Carver nods, looking about as if taking stock of their little mountain fort. Cullen draws Travers aside, struggling to swallow the fear that rises in his throat. “Knight-Corporal, I will have your report.”

“We got the witch, ser, but she weren’t alone. Two kiddies with her and, oh, dozens of li’l skulls,” and her mouth is a wound. “It were grim, ser. The Knight-Lieutenant went batshit. Never seen him so angry. And then one of them girls just up and,” she makes a sharp gesture against her palm. Every Templar knows what that means. “The Knight-Lieutenant got the demon but the girl got our Lieutenant good with her knife.”

“He’s wounded?” Cullen looks to him, but Hawke seems well enough in body. He’s chatting to one of the knights who went up the mountain with him only yesterday. All of them are clustered around him -- protectively, Cullen realises, and realises also that between Carver and Travers every one of them has been brought back. Safe. That's good.

“Dosed him up with potions, ser. He’s hale as hale. Just,” and she looks uncomfortable. “Confused in his head, ser. Don’t know us, nor anything. Some trick that li’l witch pulled, f’you ask me.”

“And where is the child now?” Cullen asks, because he _is_ a Templar, and apostates are his duty, above all things.

“In ashes, under the ground, with her mother and the other.” She makes a throwing gesture. Cullen knows the procedure for abominations and blood mages and maleficarum; a pit and a fire flask, and when the flames die down you fill it in, say a verse, walk away. “Ser, I thought the Knight-Lieutenant would be all right, once he caught sight of you.” She doesn’t need to say, ‘but he isn’t’. They both know.

“I’ll see to Hawke. You mind your men. Good work, Knight-Corporal. You’ve done well.”

The praise is important; she seems pleased by it and it is well deserved, but when she has saluted and left him Cullen doesn’t know what to do.

Carver looks exhausted, but at Cullen's approach he sighs and straightens his spine and … makes a terrible salute. “You’re my Captain, they said. Do I call you Captain?”

Cullen can’t bear it. “Cullen. For now. Until … you remember.”

Carver nods, his eyes as blue as ever and Cullen could almost believe-- “All right. Cullen, then.” But no. It’s nothing the same.

* * *

Their healer has few definitive opinions: yes, it is a curse injury; yes, it could be temporary; yes, there’s a chance it will clear up by itself; no, she can’t be sure; no, she doesn’t know how long; no, they cannot move Carver over the mountain.

“He needs rest,” Faolan, says, exasperated. “He’s a Templar, full of lyrium, disciplined to the hilt. His body’s fighting it off but it’s _tiring_. He can’t travel yet. Not through the mountains.”

It takes Cullen a great deal of effort not to let his fear shake his voice. “Is there no cure for him?”

“Someone could go into the Fade and tear the curse out of him,” she says, but he can tell by her tone that this is neither easy nor advised. “If they didn’t mind taking a good portion of what makes him ‘Ser Carver’ along with it. _And_ , we’d need a full five-point circle of Enchanters to send someone in. Or, if I had a basic grounding in blood magic and permission to slit my palms, I could do it myself.” She spreads her hands. “But I have neither.”

Need she be so flip? “Then he stays.”

Knight-Lieutenant Nottely clears his throat. “On that matter, ser. The weather is turning. If we tarry we’ll lose access to the pass when the snows come in, and be forced to winter here. We are not provisioned for it, not in any number, not for the duration.”

It seems an unanswerable dilemma. “I cannot take him but I cannot leave him.” Cullen looks from one of them to the other for advice; Faolan’s expression is unbearably sympathetic, but Nottely's is blank. He, at least, will see that Cullen does his duty, and that too is unbearable. "Well? Your thoughts?"

The mage shrugs, helpless. The Knight-Lieutenant frowns, and Cullen can see the gears turning in his head. "There's enough in the way of supplies for us to leave him here. He'd have enough, on his own, to see out the winter."

Faolan makes a sharp gesture with one hand. "He's in no shape to fend for himself. Someone has to stay."

"We can spare enough for one, or maybe two to safeguard him." Nottely calculates a moment, and then nods. "Enough to cover exigencies on both sides. It could be done without shortening rations."

Cullen considers it. "Who would we leave?"

"Enchanter Faolan," Nottely says, as if it's obvious, and Cullen does not miss the sudden tension in his healer.

"I will not leave a mage in the care of a Templar who cannot defend her, nor himself." Not to mention the dangers inherent in leaving one man and one woman isolated together for a winter. It would be unreasonable.

Faolan seems to have the same thought. "I'll not stay without yourself, Knight-Captain. Or Ser Travers." 'A woman' she does not say, but Cullen hears it all the same. It is a measure of her regard that she counts even himself as trustworthy enough under such circumstances. 

"It would leave the main party wanting a healer," Cullen says, and even as Nottely opens his mouth to suggest alternatives Cullen sees the answer, and chooses it. "I will stay with him, alone."

"Ser," Nottely protests, respectfully doubtful, "steering so many knights through the pass will take strong leadership."

"And you are more than capable, Lieutenant." Nottely seems uncertain, and Cullen decides, very quickly again, to shore his resolve the only way he can. "I will promote you to Lance-Captain for the duration."

Nottely hesitates, and then ventures a wry smile. "Acting Knight-Lance-Captain? Bit of a mouthful, that."

"It will have to suffice. The men will follow you, I trust in that. Do you object, Enchanter?"

Faolan spreads her hands. "Templar business, and none of mine. But ... if I may. Ser Carver has always been close to you. It would be best for his recovery to have someone nearby he's familiar with. I have no medical objections."

When she has gone, Nottely lingers, and Cullen must answer his concerns if he is to have the man at full confidence. "Do _you _object, Knight-Lieutenant? Forgive me -- Lance-Captain. Please speak your mind."__

"Would you do the same, ser? If it were me laid up, I mean." He is, always, to the point. Cullen respects that. Nottely has his faults, but this is not one of them.

"I would act in your best interests, of course. It seems to me that in such a case you would prefer your adjutants by your side. I think your best interests would be better served by Knight-Corporal Ainsley and perhaps Ser Gault, were you 'laid up' in this way."

Nottely nods. It's slow, but he does nod. "Probably ser." His salute, when it comes, is firm. "Your will, my hands, Captain."

* * *

The first night after the others have departed, Cullen takes a chair by the fire and invites Carver to sit with him. "You are Carver Hawke," he says, because Faolan left instructions regarding Carver's treatment, and it largely boils down to 'tell him enough but not too much, answer his questions, and let him remember on his own'. "You are one of my Lieutenants -- Ser Carver, Lieutenant of the Order of Knights Templar. Knight-Lieutenant Carver. And yes, we are both Fereldan."

Carver nods as if it makes sense, or at least as though he is listening. "And we're friends. Right, Cullen?"

They have never said it so but it is true. "Yes."

"That's why you've stayed." Carver rests his forearms on his knees, cradling the cup of wine Cullen has allowed him (they have to make it last) and looks thoughtful. "I think ... I don't know how winter goes in the Vimmarks," he says, clearly cognizant of where they are, now, if he hadn't been before, "but I think I'm glad it's you who stayed." He looks up, seeking verification or approval or ... Cullen doesn't know.

But he nods, all the same. "I believe you would have prefered it so, if you remembered me."

"Then it's good. Thank-you."

His eyes are so blue and so trusting. Cullen wishes he looked at least a little wary, because that would make sense, but instead there is only this abject _trust_ that Cullen has come to expect from him but feels disconcerted by now. "No need to thank me, Hawke. I regret nothing in the decision to stay."

Carver drinks from his cup, looks about, and he seems uncertain of things in a way that tears at Cullen's heart. Bewildered. Lost, even. Cullen wishes he had some way to console him, but nothing comes to mind, nothing this stranger with Carver's face might not find too familiar.

So, he takes refuge in planning. "Before the snows come we should shore up our supply of kindling."

Carver perks up. "So, wood-chopping, then? I can do that." He seems surprised, and then pleased. "I've _done_ that."

It is progress, of a sort. "Then, tomorrow, let us make it a priority."

"All right." 

They have taken possession of the guard-house. It is a small tower beside the fort's main gate, furnished with every necessary thing. That is why Cullen selected it. The rest of the fort, come winter, may well be over-snowed, and in here, at least, they will be comfortable. Below there is an open room housing hearthstone and pantry, on the middle floor sleeping quarters for up to six knights, and above a lookout that affords a superb view of the road leading up, the valley beneath, and the road to the pass along which all Cullen's knights have today disappeared. All save one, and that one looks expectantly at Cullen when Cullen calls curfew on him.

"Did you choose a bed?" Carver asks. There are four, two full (thoughtfully made up for them by the recruits) and two bunks set into the wall. Cullen indicates the bed nearest the shuttered window.

"I will take this, unless ... Would you enjoy the window? Or perhaps you would prefer the mage quarters?" There is a small alcove to one side, with a seclusion wall. And a bed, yes, no window, of course, and access to the stairs (and the privy) requires navigation of the main room, but Cullen cannot help but wonder if Carver might welcome the privacy.

"I'll be fine here," Carver says, sitting on the other full bed, the one nearest the stairs, and he starts taking off his boots.

Cullen watches for a moment, recollects himself, and turns his back. "When the snow comes we had best leave our footwear on the ground floor, to avoid unnecessary slush and therefore unnecessary cleaning." He strips his robes, and has his shirt up over his head when he registers Carver's low chuckle.

"You talk so proper. You a noble, back in Ferelden?"

Cullen pauses, hangs his shirt for the morning (no need to make extra laundry if it can be helped) and starts on the laces of his trousers. "My father’s father, yes. But then, your mother’s father was one of the lords of Kirkwall. So it seems we are equally noble-blooded. Though,” and he turns to see Carver watching him, kneeling on his bed in his smalls, “the Chantry may be responsible for my diction.”

Carver grins, eyes flickering down to where Cullen’s hands are. “ _Dick_ -tion,” he says, childishly amused.

Cullen clears his throat. “Do you have a nightshirt?”

Carver shakes his head, clambering under the covers. “There was none in my pack. I don’t think I wear ‘em.”

It sounds so _like_ Carver, and normally neither would Cullen, but-- “It will grow very cold before it grows warm again. You might be glad of one, come the depths of winter.”

“Can’t we just pile up more blankets? There’s plenty.”

“Even so. It may,” and here Cullen is repeating Nottely’s advice, “be necessary to bunk in together, should the winter prove particularly severe.”

“Heh. That’ll be awkward, eh Cullen?” He leans up on one elbow, and Cullen becomes acutely aware that his trouser laces are hanging loose, and finds himself in danger of blushing with embarrassment. “What with only one nightshirt between us.”

“I’m sure we’ll manage.” 

Cullen’s nightshirt is long and shapeless, and it bunches under his arms in the night, but he wears it, nevertheless, and tries not to think about Carver’s skin, naked under his blankets. It will not do, it is unfair, worse now that he is not himself.

Cullen tries to sleep and he does not think of it.

* * *

It becomes clear over time that Carver truly is not himself. During the day it’s not much noticeable; they have work to do while there is still sun enough. They divide the chores each day. Carver always opts for splitting kindling over cleaning or laundry, and after Cullen’s first (and last) bread disaster, Carver takes over the morning baking. He’s good at it, and Cullen wonders why, and if he remembers at all.

When asked, Carver shrugs. “I think … my mother? I think she taught me. I don’t know.”

Cullen isn’t certain if it is a good or a bad thing to ask him. Sometimes Carver seems frustrated, not so much by the questions as by his inability to answer them. Mostly, though, he is blissfully optimistic. He asks Cullen things and answers things and seems so... so very happy.

"Hey," he says one morning, catching Cullen out by the midden. "You seen this?"

There is a small flower, growing up white-petaled and red-centred beside a fallen stone. Carver shows it off like a prize, his face so... and then Cullen really looks. He has seen its like before, back home, in Ferelden. It reminds him of home.

"Pretty, eh?"

"Very." Cullen feels tight and awkward, and he wants to talk more about, about _things_ , but Carver has hunkered down, is touching the earth around the plant, and then he looks up.

"We could pot it up, take it inside, maybe. If you like it?" And his body says, _Do you like it? This is for you,_ and Cullen nods, placing a hand on Carver's shoulder.

"Do so. If you want."

Carver does, and then he brings in all kinds of things, little plants and herbs and things he tries to coax out of cups of water or pots of dirt, and when Cullen asks he says, "They'll die in the snow, left alone."

It seems like nothing, but, one day, when Cullen does not expect it--

"I would have died." 

Carver is making a stew of things, some dried meat and some tubers with beans, and Cullen looks up from the record of their time here that he is inking carefully into the ledger. Carver has stood back from his pot, is dusting his hands one against the other, and he looks thoughtful but also dark about it.

"If you'd left me alone, I mean. I think ... I'd be dead by now."

Cullen sits up straight, looks Carver over, and shakes his head. "No. You are resilient. I know this of you. Always, you would--"

But Carver is shaking his head. "No, I don't think so. I think I'd have given up. By now." It hasn't been so long. The snow has not yet come in in earnest, and the wind up off the valley is still mild enough that Carver is not even wearing his robes before the warmth of the fire, just shirt and trou. But, still.

"I think you would have held on longer than this," Cullen says, not sure what he _should_ say. "You are, perhaps, stronger than you believe."

"I think ... maybe you're wrong. Maybe you want me to be more than I am." He looks up. His eyes are still so blue, but... 

"Please try. Please, my knight."

Carver smiles. "I like it when you call me that. Yours. You say it like you mean it. Like it means something."

He is still such a stranger, though they have come to know one another.

"Tell me why it means something," Carver says, blue eyes asking for more, but Cullen cannot give him what he wants, what Cullen (maybe) has for him. It would be so very wrong.

"You are my best. The best of me, also. You are ... always I have wanted to make of you the knight I have failed to be." Cullen draws a breath, tries to put this into words. "My _knight_. You are everything I have wished to be, myself. But, you are so much more, I cannot--"

Carver drags in a breath, slams his hands hard up against the edge of the kitchen table, and he looks so, so _loose_. "I think ... fuck. I think I'd be whatever you asked. If you _would_ ask, but," and he looks back, blue eyes so very blue. "I think you don't. Ask, I mean. Why don't you ask?" His mouth writhes, settles into a grimace. "Why would you not? When I would."

It is a question Cullen cannot answer, won’t dare, so he changes the subject.

* * *

The snow comes, and when it comes it is sudden. Cullen wakes to a light dusting of it, kissing the trees and the ridges of the hills in white, but by luncheon the sky is dark, the air thick, the cold blowing in through gaps in the casements and Carver grimaces at the drifts of it piling up in the yard outside.

"We'll be knee-deep by nightfall," he mutters, but he straightens, casts a rueful glance at Cullen over one shoulder as he closes the door. "Get ready for a boring winter, ser."

There is remarkably little to do, once they are thoroughly snowed-in. One of the recruits left them a deck of cards, and Carver tries his best over the next week to teach Cullen how to play Diamondback and Wicked Grace. They play for counters, dried beans liberated from the pantry, and at first Carver suggests they ought to trade them in for chores about the fort, but when it becomes obvious that Cullen will end up with nothing to trade Carver sighs, scoops them up, and splits them evenly again.

Cullen attempts to protest this but Carver just shakes his head, one corner of his mouth turning up. "Can't have my captain drudging for me all winter. I'd go spare, in the end."

When they grow weary of cards, Carver finds some woodworking tools in a cupboard and a tidy store of timber scraps in a range of colours and grains. He sets about making something, sanding away at his pieces and fitting them sometimes together, but terribly secretive about it.

When he's done, though, he shows Cullen very shyly, blue eyes cutting up from below those dark lashes with an endearing kind of embarrassment. "It's for you, ser. Since you're so bored."

It's a puzzle, clearly, several triangles in varying sizes, a square, and a shape that is almost-but-not-quite a diamond. Cullen examines the pieces Carver has cut and sanded smooth and comes up blank. "Ah. My thanks. Though ... I do not know how it is played."

The look Carver gives him is sceptical. "You make a square with it."

Cullen obediently studies the puzzle, but-- "How so?"

Carver snorts, bracing his hands on the table and smirking intolerably. "I can't _tell_ you. That's the _point_. You have to work it out."

It certainly proves distracting, or rather exceedingly frustrating. Cullen moves the pieces about aimlessly, then carefully, then, deep in the evening, he lets out a cry of success that causes Carver's head to jerk up from the new thing he is making. 

Cullen clears his throat. "Ah. I believe I have mastered it."

Carver looks, makes a pleased sound in his throat, and then he says, "All right. Now you make a triangle." He grins at Cullen's no doubt dismayed expression. "What, you didn't think I'd spend that long taking the rough edges off something you could solve in a _night_ did you?"

After that there are a never-ending series of shapes to be made: a rectangle; a triangle with one point cut off; a triangle with _two_ points cut off; an almost-diamond; a square with one, two, three points removed; a goblet; an empty goblet; a goblet with a triangle missing from its belly. Every time Cullen makes one, Carver looks, smiles at him, and sketches another shape in ink on the back of a ruined piece of paper kept for the purpose.

The time passes pleasantly enough, though Carver roams restlessly about their tower, unused to such inaction. He worries about losing condition -- Cullen finds this heartening, because it speaks to a memory of before, and he encourages Carver to take what exercise he can, cooped up as they are. Carver goes to it with a will, and it is disconcerting to see him strain the shoulders of his shirts, though this pleases him a great deal.

Cullen tries not to look too closely, tries not to steal glimpses of him when he flexes himself. It is harder to ignore the curl of damp hair at the nape of his neck after washing, or the shape of his hands as he cuts vegetables, the slice of his smile when he catches Cullen looking.

The trouble is that Carver does not seem to feel the same restraint. Cullen is aware of his gaze, feeling it run the length of his back when he changes into his nightshirt. It is not unwelcome. Cullen can make no excuse to avoid it, and if he is honest he does not wish to. Carver smiles at him for no reason at all, and Cullen finds himself smiling back. Sometimes, particularly when he's laughing at Cullen for some reason, Carver props his cheek on his fist and sighs, just _looking_ at him.

Cullen cannot bear it, though he does not want Carver to stop, and for himself Carver seems disinclined to do so.

* * *

It comes to a head on a dreary afternoon with snow falling outside too thick for either of them to go out into it. Carver has grown restless and snappish, and Cullen suggests he might take stock of their linens in order to measure how long it must be before they attempt laundry again. (Oh, the drudgery of it.) Carver hates laundry, and Cullen does not enjoy it himself but it must be done. Carver grumbles and sulks, and finds every excuse to come down to the lower level to find Cullen and gripe at him over one thing or another, until Cullen loses patience with him.

"Do as I have ordered you," he snaps, and Carver's eyes bloom wide for all of a moment before he nods, and turns to thud heavily upstairs.

He does not come back down again, for so long that Cullen is left alone with his thoughts until they chafe. He should not have spoken so roughly. There is still the worst of winter for them to weather in one another's company, and they should not quarrel, and neither should Cullen use his theoretical command over Carver to force him into obedience when Carver himself remembers none of the reasons why he should obey.

And, of course, he feels low for having been so brusque, for ordering Carver about when he has, now, no right to it.

He goes up the stairs. "Carver?" No answer. He rounds the landing to find Carver sitting on his bed, surrounded by laundry piled up on the floor. Some of it is clean and folded, and the rest bundled together by type -- he has stripped the room of linens the way Cullen ordered, leaving only their chosen beds made up with what looks like the freshest of the lot -- but it is Carver that draws Cullen's eye. He has coiled himself up on the bed, arms wrapped about his knees, and he has a dark look to him that Cullen dislikes intensely. "Are you quite well?"

"I'm fine," Carver grumbles, but then he shakes his head. "I just … when you're like that, all I can think is how I've wronged you and I _shouldn't_. I'm not supposed to. I'm supposed to do anything I can to make you happy, and when you're not it feels … bad."

"You have been a knight under my command for many years, now," Cullen says, attempting conciliation. How _low_ Carver is. How he wishes he could lift the burden of it from him. "Perhaps it is instinct that makes you quick to carry out my orders." He means to go on, to give apology, to explain that he does not mean to order Carver but that it comes out of habit, and to ask his forgiveness, but Carver's eyes come up dark and intent and Cullen feels his breath falter in his throat.

"That's not why. You _know_ why." 

It cannot mean how it sounds. Cullen clears his throat, feeling a heat in his cheeks that he cannot shed nor deny. "I don't know that I do."

Carver's mouth wrenches, his brow coming down heavy over his eyes. "You _have_ to. Of the two of us, you're the one who _should_."

It's too close to the truth, too deep a condemnation of the small things Cullen has wanted and tried to hide deep within himself. He takes a step back, retreating onto the landing, afraid of what will happen if Carver thinks too deeply on this, and finds in Cullen something unforgivable.

"As I have said. Would you like a cup of tea? I'll set the water to boil." And he turns, meaning to busy himself with the kettle. He has reached the lowest step, his heart thundering horribly with the fear of discovery, when a sound on the landing makes him stop and turn.

“Cullen!” Carver has followed him out, comes now down the stairs, and he looks so-- “I need to know.”

“Ask,” Cullen says, knowing too well how he damns himself if he answers.

Carver comes only to a stop against Cullen’s chest. He’s looking down, has the high ground, and Cullen tries not to feel automatically defensive, but then Carver asks--

“Are we lovers?”

\--and Cullen has to remember how to breathe.

“You always reach out as though … but then you stop,” Carver’s saying, reaching out and _not stopping_ , hands curling around Cullen’s arms. “So are we? Is that why you stayed with me?”

Cullen cannot answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ without lying in some way. “We are not lovers. I have never asked that of you.”

“Then is it just me?” Carver lets him go, leans back against the wall of the stairwell. “Is it just me in love with you?”

“No! Carver, how could you come to that … _No_. You do not,” _love me_. Maker help him. “If anything, the opposite.”

Carver looks so confused. “What?”

“I have always been the one in love,” Cullen says, and he hates how his voice breaks on it, how weak he must seem, and he wishes Carver would not pursue it.

But Carver is relentless. “With me?”

Cullen’s mouth is dry. “Yes,” he says, and he does not know what he expects, but the way Carver grips him, as if they are lost in a high wind and Carver does not want to let him go, makes his chest ache.

“Did you _tell_ me?”

In words? No, but surely Carver had known. “You have always politely ignored anything in that regard.”

“ _What?_ ”

“That,” and Cullen does not want to say it aloud, not now, not ever, but he must. “That I. My infatuation.”

The clarity that comes into Carver’s eyes is frightening. “Maker, Cullen.” Then he unlatches one hand to cup it up under Cullen’s jaw. “Have you always been so fucking stupid?”

He should be offended, surely, but then Carver leans in, ducking his head to catch Cullen’s mouth with his own and Cullen finds himself drowning in the sour sweetness of him, and nothing else matters at all.

Carver draws him upstairs, and he goes, and when Carver pulls him down onto a bed Cullen goes there too, breaking their kisses only when necessary. He is but flesh, and here is Carver, in need of him. How could he withhold himself? He is useless before the thrust of Carver’s desires, and Carver, it seems, desires so much more of him than he has ever had the courage to offer.

“I remember this,” Carver gasps, hands warm beneath Cullen’s shirt, picking at the laces of Cullen’s trousers. “I’ve done this. But not with you?”

“Never,” Cullen tells him, and he tries to say, “You should not,” but Carver comes up, catches the back of Cullen’s head in the palm of his hand and holds him still to be kissed. Ah, his kisses. They’re messy and hungry and Cullen has himself hungered for so long that it seems foolish to resist.

“First time, then,” Carver says, eyes bright with it and beautiful. “For us. Both of us.”

Cullen thinks he understands, and the responsibility of it almost shores up his resolve to call an end to it.

And then Carver has Cullen’s trousers open around his thighs, and he wriggles down between them until he can get Cullen in his mouth and, ah! His mouth is hot, wet, and still so hungry.

No-one has ever done this for Cullen before, never sucked him in, lips red and swollen, and moved on him the way Carver does now. It feels like nothing Cullen has ever known, and he curses aloud because this? Could he have had this? Would Carver really--

Carver falls back on the bed, hands up over the loose waist of Cullen’s trousers, fingers digging deep into his buttocks. “C’mon, just … I know you want to. Maker, you’re shaking.” He cranes his neck to lick up Cullen’s cock, making a sound that ought to be outlawed, and is at the very least obscene, and Cullen bucks, wanting to be back in Carver’s mouth and ashamed of himself for wanting so much. Carver grins, lips grazing the head of Cullen’s cock, tongue flickering out to taste. “You wanna fuck my mouth? _I_ want it.”

So, Maker forgive him, Cullen does.

Oh, it’s marvellous.

Carver has his own trousers open, Cullen thinks, (when he _can_ think through the haze of arousal) has a shoulder down beneath Cullen’s thigh, his hand down further and wrapped around himself. How he _moans_. And then, how he raises his eyes, looking up at Cullen with Cullen thrusting into his mouth, and Cullen can’t help it.

When he comes he thinks the sound that spills out of his mouth is Carver’s name.

Carver makes a desperate noise, swallowing hard, then pulling away just far enough to come _back_ , pressing his face to Cullen’s thigh while his hand works furiously below. And then he’s gasping, head falling against the bed, and Cullen gets to see the face Carver makes in his extremity.

He’s beautiful.

Cullen curls in on himself, trying to find Carver’s mouth with his, and then he’s right there, tongue slick and bitter, and Cullen groans because that’s him, that’s _him_ , there in Carver’s mouth, nothing but _him_.

Carver’s hands come up his back, pull him down, and Cullen wants nothing but this, to be close to him here, in his bed, and Carver just…

He is not himself. He cannot be himself, because he would never--

“Maker, I’ve wanted you.”

For a moment Cullen thinks he might have said it himself, but no, that was Carver, that _was Carver_.

“All this time,” Carver is saying, and Cullen tries to find a point on which to balance himself, seeking equilibrium, but Carver smooths his hands over Cullen’s skin and Cullen _cannot_. “I thought you hated me, sometimes. The way you pulled away. But you don’t.” His brow furrows; Cullen tries to smooth it with a hand but, still, how it furrows. “Tell me you don’t hate me.”

Cullen feels reckless in the wake of everything they have done tonight. “How could I? Carver, I love you more than _breath_.”

Carver sighs, curls his hands into the flesh of Cullen’s shoulders. They are both so clothed still, and Cullen wishes they were not, wants to feel Carver’s skin against his own. “I think … there might be no-one in all of Thedas I love more than you.”

For a moment it’s perfect, but then Cullen remembers that _Carver remembers nothing and no-one else_ , and it falls cold and heavy in his chest. 

What has he done?

“Carver,” he says, but Carver is curled against him, arms ‘round and tightening ‘til they are each flush against the other. “Carver, _please_.”

Carver looks up, eyes wide and blue as a Fereldan summer sky. “What?” Then -- and it is awful to see -- his resolve falters. “Did I … what did I do wrong?”

“Nothing,” Cullen tells him, though he feels himself grown stiff against Carver’s frame, and Carver pulls back, hands now loose and awkward at Cullen’s sides.

“It’s _him_ , isn’t it?” He doesn’t meet Cullen’s eyes, looks away, down, eyes skittering about like moths afraid to light on anything. “The me you remember. It isn’t _me_ you want. Maker, you don’t want this, do you?” It sounds less like a question than it is a statement, and Cullen cannot refute it because there is a part of him that thinks it is not entirely wrong. “Fuck. Fucking _void_ , Cullen, I just,” and he pulls away, sits up, tugs at his trousers and begins to lace them, disregarding the spend on his belly and his hands. 

“Don’t!" The word comes out of him without thought, but he will not retract it. "Please. Do not go.”

But Carver shakes his head and now he’s up, shirt hanging half-tucked from his trousers. He staggers down the stairs, and Cullen hears the bang of a door.

No. No, this is not how it should _be_.

Cullen struggles to his feet, and there is nothing to clean, all of it went into Carver’s mouth -- oh, oh, oh, how good it was, and how good he _felt_ , and Cullen has been so _stupid_ \-- so he hauls his trousers closed, tugging at the laces, and does not bother to straighten his shirt as he stumbles downstairs and out into the night.

The snow is still falling. It’s deep, now, knee-deep, and there is a quickly filling wedge of it stamped in -- Carver must have gone this way. Cullen calls for him. “Carver!” The sound is dampened, does not echo back, sounds so small. Cullen drives on, and then he’s in up to his thighs, all of a sudden. “ _Carver!_ Hawke, please!”

Nothing. Just emptiness and snow, that is now soaking him to the skin. It’s colder than it has any right to be, and Cullen realises that he is without his robes, without his cloak, without even the blanket that they both sling about their shoulders in the mornings when desperate for the privy.

His feet are bare and freezing. But Carver is out here somewhere, and Cullen has already hurt him so deeply, he cannot abandon him now. 

He regrets it almost at once. The ice is merciless on his feet, and when he turns he realises that the tower is now vanished into the dark and the quickly falling snow. He can’t have gone far, how far could it be to go back? But the direction is not obvious, and he knows (theoretically) how easy it is to be lost in the whitewash of snow.

And Carver, perhaps, lost in it also. “CARVER!” 

But, nothing. 

He’s so cold. He needs to go back, get his robes and his boots and try again, and he shudders, hunched over himself, and picks his way back through the snow.

It takes too long. Surely he must have reached the doorstep by now. Instead, there are only rocks beneath his feet, some of them sharp enough to feel through the rapid numbing of his soles. Maker protect him, what is he doing? How foolish, to tramp through the snow barefoot, what kind of fool--

He takes a step and the ground gives way, and his ankle wrenches beneath him like wet paper.

He goes down, and the snow feels soft beside the hard hot stab through his ankle. It’s gone almost at once, but when he tries to push himself up he finds himself helpless, up to his elbows in powdered ice and nothing to grab onto for help.

Maker's mercy. 

The cold seeps wet and merciless into his bones and he knows what he must do. Push himself up to his knees and crawl, and if that is what is before him -- with the sticks and rocks sharp beneath his numbing hands -- then that is what the Maker has demanded.

Is it a punishment? For his sins, yes, perhaps. He has earned this punishment, should never have dared want anything of Carver, he has been so wrong. Such a fool, such a blind, selfish idiot, and--

The light flares. There is a silhouette against it, and for a heartstopping moment Cullen thinks it can be nothing but a demon.

But--

"What the-- Cullen!"

He comes down into the snow beside, clutching Cullen's shoulders in huge, hot hands.

"Are you all right?"

"No," Cullan gasps, stricken by … he doesn't know. Relief, he supposes, but also-- "My ankle."

"Oh, you bloody idiot." Carver has him now, has hauled him up and taken his weight, and practically drags him into the warmth of their small, bright parlour. He tips Cullen into a chair, tosses the privy blanket around his shoulders and goes instantly to the floor, rubbing Cullen's frozen feet with his hands. "You utter, total _idiot_! How did anyone put you in charge of me? You're so _stupid_ I don't…"

He goes on and on, and Cullen allows it, shuddering uncontrollably and clutching the blanket around his shoulders, feeling the warmth of the fire and Carver's hands leech into him. Carver is right, of course. Cullen has been such a fool. 

But his reasons seem misplaced. "Going off into the snow. What were you thinking?"

"I was l-looking f-for _you_ ," Cullen stammers, and the roll of Carver's eyes tells him exactly what he thinks of that.

"I'm not stupid enough to run off into a snowstorm," Carver grumbles, tilting Cullen's foot in a way that makes his vision black and his stomach lurch horribly, the pain a sickening jolt up the bones of his leg right to his brain. "You've twisted your ankle. Was it worth it?"

Worth it, to know that Carver is well? He looks away, ashamed of himself for being so foolish. Carver stands up, taking the kettle to the fire and hanging it, his face a flat mask of anger.

"Now I'm going to have to take care of you," Carver says, not meeting his eye.

Cullen feels so ashamed. "Please, forgive my foolishness. I was afraid."

Carver looks up, his eyes wide with shock. "Of what?"

There is only one answer. "Losing you."

It only seems to deepen Carver's anger. "Losing _him_ , you mean." He goes to a cupboard, yanking it open to take out medical supplies. There is an injury kit; he tears it open, finds the necessary things, and forces Cullen to drink a potion before kneeling down at his feet again to bind his ankle.

It gives Cullen a moment to think. _Him._ The Carver that Carver fears he is not. The one Cullen has loved, for so long, that is now buried in the Carver he has _here_. The same man, differently situated. But still his Carver.

"Forgive me," Cullen says, reaching out to brush his fingers through Carver's damp hair. "I miss you very much."

"You mean you miss _him_ ," Carver says, tight and awful, and Cullen shakes his head, still shivering, because that misses the point.

"He is you, and you are him. And you do not remember me now, nor all the reasons why … why I miss you."

Carver looks up, hands gone still on Cullen's calf, below the roll of his trouser-leg. He looks frightened and wary, and Cullen wants none of it, so he tries to find the words to make himself clear.

"You are yourself, and that is something I have … admired, for a very long time. But I fear only that you do not know _me_ , and are in no position to make a clear judgement on this, just now."

The way Carver catches his lip in his teeth and chews on it is heartbreakingly familiar, so much the same as always, but the frank way he meets Cullen's eye is not. It feels like something new, or perhaps like something _true_ , something Carver had hidden from him before, with the weight of rank between them.

Now Carver settles back on his heels, his gaze direct enough to be discomforting. "Do you like me?"

It dries Cullen's mouth to dust, because… "Yes," he says, and it croaks from his throat, so he wets his lips and tries again. "Yes. More than. As I have said."

"Even now?" Carver's eyes narrow. It suits him ill, this shrewdness, but perhaps it has been a part of him all along, and Cullen has simply declined to see it before. "What if you never get _him_ back?"

It is an if that takes Cullen's breath away. If he can never have _his_ Carver again, if this is the Carver he has now, and will always have. Is it enough?

The answer comes easily, and he cannot withhold it.

"I will always love you, in whatever form you take. For you are dear to me, and I will always find you so. As you are now, I find you particularly compelling."

Carver stares at him for a long string of heartbeats, and then he shakes his head, breaking into a chuckle. "You fancy fucking _bastard_. Have you always been like this?"

"I don't know. I don't believe I can be anything else," Cullen says, unsure what it is supposed to mean, but Carver is standing, reaching for a mitt to take the kettle from the stove and fill a teapot.

"That's good," he says, glancing back, his eyes crinkling. "Wouldn't have you any other way. Ser."

* * *

Carver takes him to bed. He takes Cullen to his _own_ bed, and while he insists on helping Cullen out of his clothes he refuses to fetch Cullen's nightshirt. "Don't need it, if we're bunking together," he says, and then he strips right down to his skin, slithering under the covers like something oiled and Orlesian.

It is in no way unwelcome. Cullen spends much of the night awake, feeling the rasp of Carver's breath on his neck, the warm scutter of his hands over Cullen's ribs, lazily groping him and pulling him tight. Cullen feels strange, unworthy, as if he has not earned this and in no way deserves it.

And in the morning Carver yawns at him, blinking eyes as blue as a Fereldan summer sky. "Gotta put the bread on for breakfast," he slurs, and peels himself away with obvious reluctance.

Cullen catches his wrist almost without thought, tugging on him. "Will you come back?"

Carver's grin is warm and familiar. "Can't laze about in bed all day," he says, though the slow sweep of his lashes suggests that he is not against the idea. "My Captain might get snippy about it."

"I believe you may find that he will be lenient with you, this once," Cullen tells him, and Carver snorts, levering himself up. He grabs something from one of the laundry piles, tugging it over his head, and it isn't until his whole nakedness is covered in rough cloth that Cullen realises that _Carver is wearing his nightshirt_.

"Then I'll hurry back," Carver says, bending to press a wet kiss to Cullen's temple, before thundering down the stairs with the enthusiastic clatter of a whole pack of mabari.

Cullen lies there in Carver's bed, clad only in his smalls, wallowing in the fading warmth of Carver's body. He should feel … more foolish, he thinks. His ankle is well, thanks to Carver's persistence with the injury kit, and he hikes up his foot to unwind the dressing and toss it on the floor. And then his smalls too, because he suspects he will not need them. Anyway, they chafe. Carver will understand, surely.

When Carver comes back, diving under the covers and griping about the cold, the very first thing he does is put his chilly feet on Cullen's warm ones, and then chortle at the noises Cullen makes in protest.

"It's a tax," he says, pressing cold hands to Cullen's ribs and dragging him in. "A bread tax. Don't you want bread for breakfast?"

"I do," Cullen admits, suffering himself to be used for his warmth. "Eventually."

Carver's hands ghost over Cullen's naked hips, and down to his thighs, seeking out his bare skin. He seems delighted. "Oh? How long is that, then? Your 'eventually'."

"I don't know, ser knight," Cullen tells him, pretending to nonchalance while his cheeks burn with embarrassment. "I suppose that is up to your good judgement."

Carver's grin is like the sun, his eyes like the sky, and the warmth of his mouth like every good thing Cullen has never let himself have before now. "Then the bread is gunna _burn_ , I tell you."

It doesn't, in the end, Carver conscientious enough to drag himself out of bed for the hundred heartbeats it takes to run downstairs and drag their breakfast onto a rack to cool, but then he's back, straddling Cullen's hips and smirking.

"Where was I?" he asks, eyes bright and eager. 

Cullen reaches for his cheek. "I believe you were _here_."

"Oh, yeah. _That's_ right." And Carver dips his head to kiss him again, again, again.

* * *

It's bittersweet a month later, on the morning Cullen wakes cold, the shutters open and Carver standing naked between them to stare out the tower window. He's peach and gold, kissed rosy by the sunrise, the whole length of him muscular and strong, despite a winter spent indoors. Not entirely _inactive_ , Cullen concedes, but still not as active as he might have been given a barracks and a training yard on which to work out his frustrations.

Cullen admires him quietly, but he must make some noise because Carver looks back over his shoulder.

"Hey," he says, low and soft, and Cullen's heart is full with the gentle breath of the morning after a night free from dreams, all of them chased away by the press of Carver's body and the warmth of his affection. But then Carver says, "The snow's melted. I reckon we could take the pass, tomorrow."

Tomorrow. It will all be over then. They will have to go over, find Nottely and Cullen's knights, and take up the burden of duty once again. This small space they have made for themselves (all its luxuries and indulgences) will be lost.

"Or," Carver says, twisting to lean up in the window casing, naked as a babe and seemingly unconcerned about it, "We could run off down the mountain, find a ship in some dockyard somewhere, and play at pirates."

He doesn't mean it. Except in how much he does, just a little, and Cullen cannot deny that the thought is somewhat appealing. Not the pirates, but the running off together. They two, free of any concern but where to find food, shelter, a soft place in which to enjoy one another.

But. Duty, always, heavier than a mountain, and Cullen has made his vows and _meant_ them.

It must show in his face because Carver sighs, pushing off from the window to come down onto the bed. "I guess it's over the mountain, then."

"We have our duty," Cullen says, and Carver makes a face. He still kisses him, though, kisses Cullen's mouth with an insistence that seems oddly desperate for a man who has had a surfeit of them, this last month.

"What does that mean," Carver asks, a little later, his eyes gone sorrowful, "for us? Are we never going to again, once we go over those mountains?"

Cullen doesn't know. But he knows what he wants. "Nothing between us will change," he says, catching Carver's hand and holding it fast. "Not in our hearts, no matter how we may have to temper it with caution, or reticence. I will love you," he says, needing Carver to hear it and understand it to be true, "always and in equal measure. No matter what we face."

The crease of Carver's eyes is nearly as welcome as the stretch of his mouth around his smile. "Okay. Me too, you know. For you, ser." And then he bites his lip, clearly not sure if he should leave it at that.. But-- "The more I remember of you," he says, careful, with his eyes fixed on Cullen's own, "the more I _know_."

It's enough. It's far more than Cullen deserves.

"Then, let us make our plans. Together, my knight," he says, and Carver's grin is wholesome and wonderful.

* * *

(He takes the wooden puzzle when they go, despite Carver's suggestion that someone else will find it diverting if they're trapped in this fort over another long winter. Cullen nods, and refuses, and makes sure instead that the wood-pile is well-stocked. This puzzle is his, and he will suffer no-one else to claim it, nor the man who made it, ever again.)

* * *

What he brings back from the mountains is not the Carver Hawke he took there, not quite the same. This one is louder, freer, more inclined to laugh at him, and very _bad_ at saluting or not rolling his eyes whenever he thinks Cullen is being -- _Stupid, Cullen, that's_ stupid -- foolish. But it is still Carver Hawke, his Hawke, the one that loves him. The one he loves.

He catches Carver's smile, the sly dart of his eyes, sees the way he swaggers when he notices Cullen looking, and feels certain that he will never want anything else.

**Author's Note:**

> Full disclosure, this was initially inspired by MsBarrows' [Broken Souls](http://archiveofourown.org/works/375008/chapters/611694), which features a templar and a tranquil and a tower and lots of snow. I honestly can't remember how much I may or may not have riffed on/stolen from that. I do remember enjoying it, and recommend you _read the tags_ before diving into that one.


End file.
